Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Every now and then I check my spam filter and find the usual junk mail: ads for foreign pharmaceuticals, phishing scams, solicitations to buy products to make my hair (or other things) grow, and the many variations on the Nigerian inheritance scam.

Here is an example of one such email:

Good day my dear,
In confidence,i have to introduce myself, i am Miss. Christy Watars,24
years old,I am the only child of late Mr & Mrs.Richard Watars.

I prayed before contacting you, please for God sake do not see my mail as embrassment as we do not know each other before.
I wish to request for your assistance in my efforts to procure the
transfer of my inherited fund from my late parents for investment
ventures under your care and directive,while i continue my education in NewZealand.

I inherited Three Million,Four Hundred Thousand US-Dollars
($3,400,000.00)I wish to require your assistance in receiving the
transfer of my
inherited fund in your account for investment purposes only, it is my
wish to come over to Newzealand to further my education while you
take care of the investment on my behalf.

i need your urgent assistance to transfer my inherited fund to Newzealand and also your assistance to secure my future
in NZ where I will continue my education

If you are a teacher of English, you feel almost compelled to correct the grammar, punctuation, syntax and formating and return it to the user, don't you? C'mon - don't you? Yeah - me too. And even though we don't proofread and edit the document, we all must wonder, "Why do scammers send out email with such horrendous writing? Don't they know that no one is going to buy the message with such glaring mistakes?"

Well, there is a method to the madness, and a mistaken assumption on our part. ALMOST no one will buy the error-riddled pitch. But the ones who do not recognize the mutilation of the Queen's English are exactly the ones who the scammers want to reach. If you can correct the grammar and spelling, you are probably too smart for the scammers. They aren't trying to reach you. You are not their audience. People with lower intelligence are their audience.

So - if you want ONLY people with lower intelligence to give your message a fair hearing, then, for goodness sake, do not pay attention to spelling or grammar or punctuation!

Most of our students - and we ourselves - do not hope for such a limited audience. Whether it is teachers teaching, preachers preaching, advertisers advertising, or students studying, we hope to reach more than just the dumbest people around. In those cases, good grammar and correct spelling and proper punctuation insure you include the widest possible audience - including potential employers, potential publishers, colleagues, and leaders of the community. Everyone is included when good writing takes place. (I've never heard anyone say, "I ain't going back to that restaurant - they spell everything 'right' on their menu. Smarty-pants know-it-alls!" or "I don't think we should consider this candidate; his writing is just too perfect.")

Dr. Nick

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About Me

Randy D. Nichols is a life-long learner and communicator who now learns alongside college students as they engage the ever-shifting literacies of our modern digital world. He has a passion for engaging communication issues with fellow-communicators in the workplace, community, and the classroom.

His creative approach to forging communication solutions out of available (or easily obtainable) resources is part of what makes him the "McGyver of Communications." He enjoys bringing a "rhetorical imagineering" to his courses, seminars and speeches - and is happy when his ideas are adopted, modified, augmented, re-mixed and shared with others. (He wears his Creative Commons T-shirt with pride!) Dr. Nichols shares a multitude of curated resources with educators and communicators at his RhetoricSoup.com website. Randy D. Nichols, Chair of
Limestone’s Dept. of Communications, is featured in the new book, Mobile
Technologies and the Writing Classroom. Nichols worked with fellow Clemson
Doctoral Alumna, Dr. Josephine Walwema, to contribute a chapter titled
"Untangling the Web through Digital Aggregation and Curation" to this
new NCTE publication. This chapter outlines an approach to encouraging students
toward a more "critical consumption" of digital resources by using
free and popular tools for mobile devices, such as Flipboard and Pinterest, and
even includes a sample lesson as a "play exemplar" for fellow
educators to revise, rework, subvert and remediate.

Dr. Nichols is energized by communicating, not only inside the college classroom, but outside as well. He enjoys speaking to emerging young scholars at events such as the Olde English Consortium and the SC Teacher Cadets events. He also values his opportunities to speak at, and learn from, events such as the Popular Culture Association Conferences, and the Conference on College Communication and Composition.